[CUSTOM] not-Hasbro

I read just the first page, but that thread SURE looks like a hoot...IF it stays Jin-centric. The guy's a fucking jackass, and when I read the first reply, "WGAF", I laughed my ass off! Glorious!

I don't follow any part of the TF fan community other than what's posted here. I mean, I have NO doubt egos run rampant there just like in any MEGA-fan community. But reading about folks telling Jin to go fuck himself was damn refreshing.

Heli88 Wrote:
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> I followed the link, but it didn't work.
>
> Did I miss the DRAMA?
>
> I'm sad.

Yeah, the TFW staff deleted the thread. It was pretty spectacular. Basically, self-proclaimed internet tough-guy Jin, who was claiming a while back that he was compiling a list of contact and location information on third-party manufacturers to give to Hasbro to help get them shut down, started a thread kinda out of the blue addressing the masses to succinctly lay out 'his stance' on the third-party issue. He claimed it was in response to some sniping and griping he's been seeing 'all over the boards' since he became so vocal against third-party stuff, but most people posting in the thread expressed a distinct lack of caring or knowledge about who he was, why he needed his own thread to pontificate in, or why they should care.

From there, it collapsed into standard internet argument fare... Jin told people who disagreed with him that they were infringing on his civil liberties to voice an opinion (which is an incorrect). People pointed out the hypocrisy of someone who makes hundreds, and sometimes thousands of dollars repainting and selling toys based on IP he does not own calling out someone else for infringing on IP. Somewhere in there, things got real murky when Jin started revealing that more of his motivation against third-party manufacturers seems to be that they are Chinese, and thus giving money and jobs to China instead of Amurrica. Then he called people who disagreed with him Nazis, and the internet argument cycle was complete.

I will probably save a copy of the whole thing for future reference, before it disappears from Google's cache.

EDIT: Damn, it looks like Google cached each new page as it was created, so they have all of page 1, but after that each page is incomplete. Maybe someone on TFW saved a copy and it'll resurface later. I'd love to read the rest.

thomas Wrote:
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> Doesn't look too modified from the original...so
> either someone who is not HasTak has the Shockwave
> mold, or someone made a (recent?) copy of it.
>
> Is that currently available, and does it have the
> electronics?

The instructions explain how to load the battery and activate the light and sound and it shows a picture of a small hand pointing at not-Astro Magnum's dick.

Man, how well I remember all those Saturday mornings, curled up on the couch with my blanket and a bowl of cereal, watching the latest episode of God Gun Biography. Handarm Passes was kind of a dick, though.

I'm glad I got to read a little of the Jin thread. Many moons ago, he used to hang around at another toy forum I frequented, and I was always amazed at his titanic ego and the absolutely insane prices he seemed able to get on ebay for his customs.

Yeah, I think the first time I heard of "Jin Saotome" (WAAAAY kewl name, by the way!) was when he took that $11 Mega Bloks toy, poorly repainted it in Unicron colors, and sold it on eBay for $900. Fantastic.

Nah I think it's also a heavily remolded minicon. They're all heavily remolded... like, that space shuttle didn't look quite so much like a space shuttle when it was a Minicon, and that fire truck wasn't a fire truck.

My big hangup with the third party stuff is purely financial; I feel like an idiot paying $50-$100 for the equivalent of a $12-$15 toy. A hundred dollar trailer to make my $12 (actually, $7 from Ross) Optimus Prime toy look neater just seems like an idiot move. $40 for the same thing seems less dumb.

It looks like it's supposed to be engine parts. I'll have to wait and see how they look in color, but I kind of like it. But I think they should've made the hip area bulkier - more like your standard post-Gundam anime robot proportions, where the waist slims down and the hips jut forward a bit.